Collateral (Collateral Damage 1)

He hands me the bag. “I thought you had your mother’s ring,” he says.

I take it from him, reach inside to retrieve the box and set the empty bag on the nearby table. I open it to look at the obscenely large square-cut diamond on its heavy platinum band.

“She won’t be wearing my mother’s ring.” I won’t let a Marchese taint the ring that was given to my mother from my father and worn with love.

I close the box and slide it into my pocket.

“Drink?” I ask him just as I hear a door open upstairs.

His eyes flicker to the second floor and I turn to watch Gabriela emerge from her room wearing a turquoise sundress. Her straight hair hangs loose to her shoulders, the thick bangs brushed to the side and tucked behind one ear.

She doesn’t realize we’re there as she looks down either side of the hallway before turning and seeing us.

She stops short.

Rafa clears his throat.

I remain silent, watching her as she steels her spine and walks to the stairs, her hand tentative on the intricately patterned iron banister as she makes her way silently down the marble staircase. Silent because she’s wearing flip-flops and even so, I can see the shape of her slender legs, the lean muscle of her thighs.

As she nears the bottom, her gaze shifts to Rafa momentarily. Before returning narrowed eyes to mine, she lifts her head a little higher. Haughty and arrogant is my princess bride. My stolen bride.

I will rid her of her arrogance.

She comes to stand a few feet from us. “Were you in my room?” she asks me boldly.

I’m surprised by her question, by her daring. Clearly a single spank to her ass didn’t instill any fear.

“Correction, Gabriela. You are in my room in my house.”

“Did you come in there while I was sleeping?”

“I did,” I say, smiling as I step a little closer so she has to crane her neck to look up at me. She can’t be more than five feet five inches tall.

Speaking of.

“Flip flops are for the beach or the pool. You’ll wear high-heeled shoes to dinner.” I look her over. “The rest is fine. Go upstairs, change and come back.”

Her brows rise high on her forehead, and she looks from me to Rafa and back.

“What?” she asks.

Rafa chuckles. “I’ll see you later, cousin.”

I hold her gaze when he walks out of the house.

Millie passes by, carrying something to the table already set for dinner out by the pool. She pretends we’re not even standing there.

“What part was confusing?” I ask Gabriela.

“I’m…are you serious? You want me to change my shoes for dinner?”

“I’m for fucking real, yes,” I say, using her own words from earlier, reminding her how I dealt with her the last time.

She shifts her weight to one foot, jutting her hip out a little and cocking her head to the side. She studies me and I watch her pale blue-green eyes. Eyes the color of the Sicilian sea. The color of foam that washes up on the beach.

“Sure,” she says, pasting a fake smile on her face and turning to march back up the stairs. “Why not?”

I watch her go. This isn’t the response I expected. I thought she’d give me some ridiculous fight. She is only eighteen, after all.

But she’s no child.

I give a shake of my head as Millie reappears with a silver tray upon which sits a tumbler of whiskey.

“Thank you,” I say, taking it, my eyes sliding back up to the closed door of Gabriela’s borrowed bedroom.

Millie’s been with us for a long time. She worked for my father before me and she’s devoted to my family.

I head outside, walking around the pool to the edge of the patio to look out to the vast sea. I think again about how Palermo is the most beautiful place on earth.

A few moments later, I hear Gabriela’s heels clicking loudly on the stairs. I don’t turn around, but my mouth moves into a smile.

The tantrum’s coming, her little show of resistance. It’s all she can do because when it comes to us, she has zero control and she knows it.

“Is this more to your liking?” she asks from behind me.

I turn to find her standing just outside the large open doors of the patio. A glance at her feet shows me she chose a pair of turquoise high-heeled sandals, one from a local designer. Her slender legs look even longer now.

I nod my approval and sip my drink, watching how her hands clench and unclench at her sides, how her jaw tightens when she grits her teeth.

Moving to the table, I pull out her chair. “Sit.”

She mutters something under her breath.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t give me orders like I’m a dog.”

“I’ll give you orders exactly as I wish.”

She stands her ground.

I gesture to the chair. “Don’t be a child. I’m hungry.”